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An Overnight Broadway Success, After 7 Years

Every once in a while that waitress serving you coffee really does become a star. That's what is happening to Amy Spanger, whose theater-district resume includes more than one stint at McHale's at Eighth Avenue and 46th Street.

These days Ms. Spanger, 28, is working one block south of McHale's and just west of Eighth, at the Martin Beck Theater, where she has received critical and audience acclaim for her performance as Lois Lane, the freewheeling and easy-living cabaret singer turned thespian in the hit Broadway revival of the 1948 Cole Porter-Sam and Bella Spewack musical, ''Kiss Me, Kate.''

Ben Brantley in The New York Times hailed Ms. Spanger as a ''fresh young star in the making'' who gets three of the evening's best songs (''Why Can't You Behave?,'' ''Tom, Dick or Harry'' and ''Always True to You'') and ''lands each of them with a sharp-edged sensuality that turns her gold-digging archetype into something newly minted.''

Sitting in her publicist's office, Ms. Spanger, a native of Newbury, Mass., remembered the morning after opening night in mid-November when, after seven years on the theater scene in New York doing what so many others do in their attempt to make it in show business, she achieved her overnight success.

''My family was in town, and we all had breakfast together,'' she said. ''I hadn't seen the papers. I woke up really late. My boyfriend came over. My brother was there, and my parents. We all read the reviews together. Everyone was just so happy. They said, 'You finally got your break.' I got so many phone calls. My dressing room was filled with flowers. It was a dream. It still is. I feel like Cinderella.''

''Kiss Me, Kate'' stars Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie as Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi, divorced actors who get together again to try out a new musical in Baltimore based on Shakespeare's ''Taming of the Shrew.'' The director is Michael Blakemore and the choreographer Kathleen Marshall. ''They took a chance on me,'' Ms. Spanger said. ''I hadn't done a lot of work in New York. And I'm so grateful.''

Ms. Spanger's dream began in Newbury, a small town north of Boston, where she grew up the middle child of three. ''I don't have the accent,'' she said. ''I lost it. My parents have it, though.'' Her father, Stephen Sr., is the head of guidance at a high school; her mother, Nancy, is the director of sales for a cosmetics company.

Ms. Spanger always performed in school plays, among them a musical ''Christmas Carol'' in the sixth grade, playing a female Scrooge. She started training as a dancer at 16 -- ''kind of late,'' she said -- and after high school attended the University of Massachusetts as a theater major. ''But I dropped out after a year,'' she said. ''I didn't like being in the classroom.''

Where she wanted to be was New York, to follow a classic route from small town to success in the big city. And so, seven years ago, at age 21, she found a roommate and moved to 108th Street and Broadway. ''I knew one person in New York,'' she said. ''I met her at a party and moved in with her. My parents put the furniture from my bedroom at home into the back of a truck and took me to Manhattan. I started waiting tables, going to auditions, taking dance and acting classes, studying voice. And within two and a half months I got my first stage job.''

That first gig was as Cassie in a regional-theater production of ''A Chorus Line.'' Next came dinner theater in Westchester, then a bus-and-truck tour of ''A Chorus Line,'' then a small role as a cockney newsboy in a production of ''Jekyll and Hyde.'' And then she was hired as an understudy on Broadway -- for the role of Betty Schaefer, the pretty young screenwriter who makes Norma Desmond jealous in ''Sunset Boulevard.'' ''I went on a couple of times,'' Ms. Spanger said. ''It was my first Broadway show.''

She did a workshop in Toronto on an early version of ''Fosse.'' And then she auditioned for the first national tour of ''Rent.'' ''When I got back from Toronto, I didn't have a job,'' she said. ''So I started waiting tables again at McHale's,'' a mecca for Broadway stagehands. ''I worked at McHale's on and off for about a year. It's an easy place to work. Burgers and beers.''

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But this time the waiting on tables was short term. ''The first day back I got 'Rent.' So I left.'' After ''Rent'' came ''Chicago,'' a small role on Broadway, understudying Roxie Hart and Velma, and eventually playing Roxie in the national tour for three months. ''And then I got 'Kiss Me, Kate.' ''

Ms. Spanger auditioned for ''Kiss Me, Kate'' more than once, beginning about a year ago. ''I had what I thought was a great audition, and they brought me back four or five months later,'' she said. ''I remember seeing Sharon Lawrence at the audition and thinking that she's going to get it. And she did. But then her TV series was picked up, so they had me come in and audition again. And I went back and nailed it.'' (The series for Ms. Lawrence, known on television as the wife of Detective Andy Sipowicz on ''N.Y.P.D. Blue,'' was ''Ladies' Man'' on CBS.)

Ms. Spanger said she loved the character of Lois, the second banana to Lilli, and she doubles as Bianca in the ''Kiss Me, Kate'' version of ''Shrew'' and uses time-honored ways to get ahead but is always true to her men, in her fashion. ''I had a great time researching her,'' she said. ''I watched a bunch of Judy Holliday films to get the feeling for that kind of edgy ingenue, someone lacking in craft but who gets away with a lot nonetheless. She uses her sexuality to her advantage, but it's a survival mechanism. She sleeps with guys to get ahead, and she doesn't see anything wrong with it. It's just how she's approached life.''

Standing 5 feet 5 inches, Ms. Spanger has blue eyes and blond hair with streaks of black. Her fingernails are painted an orangey red with pink and gold flecks. ''This is my Lois color,'' she said. ''It's very garish.'' Onstage as Lois, her hair is red, a wig created, she said, ''because they wanted to have a very distinct contrast between Marin's blond hair and me.''

''My initial idea, from seeing all the classic ditzes, was that Lois should be platinum blond, maybe short and kinky hair,'' she said. ''But the second I put on the wig and costumes I felt, there she is. It made total sense.''

Ms. Spanger said she adored the wit and sophistication of the Porter lyrics and how perfectly they defined Lois's character. But she wants to be clear: Lois and she are not alike.

''There's a similarity between us in that she's more street smart than book smart,'' she said. ''And at times I can be a bit of a ditz, and I can be a total goof. But I think I'm a pretty equal combination of goofball and very serious person. And I also think I have an ability to laugh at myself, which is important in this business because it can get to be such a grind, with people constantly telling you no. It's important to be able to laugh at them and laugh at yourself.''

Ms. Spanger, who still lives on the Upper West Side -- ''I've had 10 different apartments, but this one I've had for three years'' -- has classic goals: television and movies and more theater. ''I'd love to play Charity in 'Sweet Charity' and Sally Bowles in 'Cabaret,' '' she said. ''And I've always pictured myself having a television variety show like Tracey Ullman's, doing all those different characters.''

But she said another aspect of her life was also important. She would like to marry and eventually be a mother. Her boyfriend of three years is an actor. ''It's like a roller coaster, us both being in this business,'' she said. ''But we're both becoming more established, so it gets a little bit easier. There's more money, and we're both working in the city now.'' (She won't mention his name, she said, because ''we want to keep our identities separate.'')

Is he a candidate for husband? ''I think so,'' she said. ''Yeah. He's a great guy.''